Biography

I come from the North of the Valencia region, in Eastern Spain. I obtained my first degree (English Philolology) at the University Complutense, Madrid, after which I moved to London, where I worked as a dictionary editor (for bilingual and monolingual dictionaries) at the same time as I pursued my academic interests in the area of Hispanic studies, specialising in the works of the Spanish realist author Benito Pérez Galdós. In 1998 I received my PhD from Birkbeck College, University of London. Between 1998 and 2009 I worked as a tenured professor at the University of Leeds, in the North of England. During this time I continued to research different aspects of the work of Pérez Galdós, on which I wrote two monographs: Visions of Filth:Deviancy and Social Control in the Novels of Pérez Galdós (Liverpool University Press, 2003) and Galdós's "Torquemada" Novels: Waste and Profit in Nineteenth-Century Spain (University of Wales Press, 2007). Since August 2009 I have worked as a lecturer at the University of Illinois. At the moment, I am investigating various aspects of alcoholism in the novels and short stories of the Valencian author Vicente Blasco Ibáñez with a view to publishing a monograph. In this context, the main facets in which I am interested are: alcoholism and anarchism; alcoholism and the working classes; drink and racial degeneration; drink and the work ethic; and alcoholism in connection with the city-country polarity. For more information on my publications and work experience, see my curriculum vitae.